My New & Improved Studio/Practice Area!

I'd suggest for another addition to be improving your pedal board.

You could build yourself a true-bypass switched board so that you are only running through the effects that you're actually using or going to use on the song. That will create a cleaner signal chain.

Thanks for the suggestion. How would I do that? Any plans on the internet to build/wire this?

Thanks

The basic idea is that you'd create a bus that you plug your signal-in into, and which has a signal out.

Then for each foot pedal, you have a switch on the bus that is either on or off. If it is on, the foot pedal would be included in the signal chain. If it's off, it won't.

So each switch would take the signal-in and either send it all to signal out (bypass) or it would send it to the pedal, and send the return from the pedal down the bus.

If you want to get fancy, you can put an input level and an output level meter and pot on the board for finer control.

If you want to get really really fancy, you can do something like making the whole thing midi switchable.

But to start with all you'd need is a dpdt switch for each pedal, and the wiring to tie it all together.

I'm sorry but without plans I am lost...what is a bus (not the big yellow one's either! :lol: )? I can figure out electronics when looking at a diagram or following directions but to do it from scratch I have no clue.

Thanks

Basically a long line that runs parallel (circuitwise) to all the pedals, along which the signal travels. If no effects are switched in, the signal comes out of the other end clean, and no noise from the pedals is added. Any or all of the pedals can be switched in separately. For example, the signal here goes from left to right, and is switched into pedal A, but bypasses pedal B:

o--- Pedal A ---o o--- Pedal B ---o
/
---o o--------o o-----
/
o---------------o o---------------o That's two throws per switch btw, the switches either side of each pedal are the two halves of each DPDT switch.

KP: My electronics is a bit flakey when it comes to music with regards to grounding - is it safe to share the ground and just switch the signal? Or do you need QPDT switches and switch the whole lot in and out?

It's generally safe to share the ground, but most custom guys will ground and shield the bus just to be safe.

Of course, they also tend to do things like have clean and dirty A/B switching, stereo outs to multiple buses, etc., so there's a real need to isolate signals in those cases.

Looks good since the last time I checked out the thread.

Suggestion. If I were you I would buy a guitar stand that holds like 8 guitars in one. The three holder for the acoustics is close, but an 8 holder or something would make everything more efficient. You want to change guitars its all in one rack.